Monday, 26 July 2010

The Facebook Killer—corny title, working title (for a story that will never rise above the ‘mad idea’ level)

A person creates a Facebook group that celebrates feline torture and abuse. Following an incident where unstable and nasty children had shot his cat with an air rifle, Mr Catlover, is, as the Americans would say, pissed.

His long term aim is to attract as many like minded people together, befriend them and shoot them full of air gun pellets.

I love avoiding violence and killing in my stories so this is not my cup of sherry but if any of my blog followers, want to use this idea then they can. It’s nonsense that some bright spark will be able to shoehorn into some comfortable and stylish literary footwear.

Monday, 19 July 2010

In a world where no one has ever even considered eating animals a portly entrepreneur opens a shop selling animals, freshly killed, in animal-shaped coffins to customers with no concept of the will to purchase such nastiness. The venture fails to capture the public’s financial imagination. During a think-tank-thought-swim a rebel, a maverick, suggests, as a joke some say, that the dead animals could be heated up; their flesh made edible and sucked off the bone. This was tried and found to be nutritious and filling.

It was hard to persuade the public that actual beautiful cute animals could be eaten. But psychological training was used to help people cope with ingesting what seemed at first like inedible carcass.

Success grew bacterially.

Soon after, the meat diet became popular; everyone was happy. The downside was that eating human flesh became popular too.

Before the end of this horror story humans have eaten each other (themselves) into extinction. The last survivor, soon to be an a ex-survivor, eating himself out of sheer boredom.

The epoch of the non-human animals returns and the planet gets a nice long rest from humanity; until the next time, (this gives room for a sequel).

This guy buys a B52 bomber from a bloke in an alleyway behind a pub in a town with a bad reputation that had never one bloom of the year, ever. He parks it in the desert, near the sea, by the mountains. He had dreams of flying around the world for his retirement; adding a refueller to his collection of aircraft and crewing it with blonde Swedish, Danish or Nicaraguan bimbos (with aeronautical training).

After nine months of planning, scheming and note-taking he found that the giant ex-US air force bomber had been jacked up and its engines stolen.

He sliced off the wings and made the big bird into a boat with wheels and towed it round the desert with a specially modified Volkswagen camper van.

Thursday, 8 July 2010

Of the fourteen stories in Shorts You Will Never Wear my favourite is the last. It is an account of an annual festival in an Italian hilltop town called Cavallisghembi Citta (Town of Crazy Horses).

It parodies archaic social behaviours that are still going strong in many places; like the running of the bulls in Spain and the Palio in Italy. It makes fun of human behaviour with a respectful if eye-rolling perspective.

The delivery is bordering on mickey-taking because it is in a pigeon-style dialect. I find it hilarious. I love it to bits. As an example, here the narrator explains:

Everyone over a certain IQ and under a certain IQ has a role to take part in. There are no shortcomers lurking in Cavallisghembi Città. Like a great operatic play of passion the people assemble at relevant start points and await their cue. The flag is dropped by the mayor of Cavallisghembi Città, a man who in the English translation is rendered: ‘he who would change the trajectory of the Moon in order to light his own barbecue even if others have to roast flesh in the dark.’ Then with pomp and merry circumstance the competitors of the Scrambling of the Horse flee the pursuit of each other with brutal delight and lack of healthcare.

To ensure just fairness the fleetest of Sghembi are handicapped and wear thick and heavy iron shoes nailed to their hoofboots to level the playing field. Though the gaits of these gladiators are benumbed by iron shoes they have the balance of the scale restored by their ability to gallop rough-shod over the minds and bodies of the unfortunates. All of these racer-gladiator-gadabouters clatter about the course around the town, treading sometimes on themselves when they have fallen. No participant is any longer Mr. nice guy. The darkest most basic of all human behaviour surfaces and swims around on the sea of tradition. Family prides and reputations are at the stake; some will burn until flesh melts and bones char, yet others will emerge from the ring victorious.

It is truly a mad place, but at least no animals are taunted or harmed in the process, only the human participants. Having said that, there is some abuse of the year’s fresh crop of virgins.

This is a book that fills a niche that has been gapingly void for eons. If you deal with baby horses of any colour you need to read this book. Written by a top Horse expert, it fills in gaps and leads to an easier life for equine and human.

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

The telescope, an antique of untraceable origin, was a prize in a competition that no one could remember entering. The little girl who won the telescope put it to her eye and found a magical new world. One day the little girl, a strained eye glued to the telescope, noticed something that not even the biggest space agencies and organisations had noticed. Way beyond the reflection of her own eye she saw the surface of the Moon. It was strangely cut up and scuffed. She looked every day; in the morning long before school and in the evening before she had to go to bed. On the tenth day of intense gazing she reached a point of clarity: there was a horse loose on the Moon. There could be a hundred reasons for a horse to be on the Moon but she couldn’t think of even one. She felt close to him; she thought she knew him, even if it was only from a picture-book or telly-ad. She knew him as Ol' Clippety-Cloppety.

The story involves a lost Cloppety, and a missed intergalactic conference due to the Blue planet being infested with deadly bacteria: humans. I hope the story isn’t too spoiled by telling you that Ol’ Clippety gets his Cloppety back before the last full stop brings the curtain down.

Sunday, 4 July 2010

In a story called, The Trouble with Talent, a man finds success in failure. It begins:

The best years of my youth were disturbed when my grandmother died. My grandfather wobbled for a while on the edge of a deep hole before he found he could fill it with a certain eight year old boy: me. My grandfather devoted himself to moulding me into the performer he had secretly wanted to be himself. He tried me with most forms of entertainment, but when, at last, with frustration wracking his mind and body, I proved to be the world’s worst ever ventriloquist, his heart and soul gave up. His last words were, ‘He can’t sing, he can’t dance, he can’t even tie his own effing shoe laces.’

In a way, his death was a release for us both. At sixteen I became a free agent, wallowing in redundancy and craving attention. After school I worked in a factory. I liked the job, but every day voices screamed, ‘you loser’, ‘you quitter’, ‘you nobody’, as though granddad’s spirit were goading me.

After dealing with fraudsters and a psychopathic ‘adult’ clown called Kokayne the Klown, he comes to a light at the end of the tunnel of nightmares …

Friday, 2 July 2010

It has just occurdeth to me that most of my stories have an animal rights twist; a moral slanted look at the way we treat our domesticated animals. We live among some pretty cruel happenstancings and the more we realise this the more we will, hopefully, adjust our social behaviour.

One story (in my collection) subtley introduces the fact that the UK is the butcher of Europe when it comes to horse flesh for human consumption. Few people know this and that is why the industry is involved in mass torture of innocent, sentient beings while the public turn an ignorant eye.

I personally think more needs to be done to protect animals. We have an obligation to look after them which is, sadly, often wanting.